“I’m the perfect servant. I have no life.” — the housekeeper (Helen Mirren)
“Tea at Four. Dinner at Eight. Murder at Midnight.”
It’s the only tagline applied to Gosford Park, the long, luxuriously paced Robert Altman film set during a shooting weekend at a wealthy English country estate. The time is November 1932, near the end of a long, slow decline that had begun at the turn of the century, earlier even, marking the end for the leisure-loving, do-nothing aristocrats.
True, there is a murder—whether or not at midnight is debatable—but the film isn’t really a murder mystery. The death comes midpoint in the proceedings, isn’t the focus of the plot and, besides, no one cares about the dead man. At breakfast the next morning, Countess Constance Trentham (Maggie Smith), a guest of the estate, bemoans, “I thought it was a good idea to have someone in the house who is actually sorry he’s dead.” Even the widow, Sylvia McCordle (Kristin Scott Thomas), is most distraught, true, but only over the resultant decline in her social status. She entertains a lover the night of the murder.
The arriving Inspector Thompson (Stephen Fry) wants to interview Lady Sylvia, thinking, surely, she won’t go out for her customary horseback ride the morning after her husband’s murder, but she does. She is no more concerned by the death than anyone else in the house.
Thompson tries to ingratiate himself with these upper crust snobs, who, he blasély misunderstands, regard him as no better than a delivery man. He himself is at odds with the usual portrayal of the detective smarter than his assistant—Poirot and Hastings, Holmes and Watson, Philo Vance and friend Van Dine—and is slow on the uptake compared with his associate, Constable Dexter (Ron Webster).
When Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) knocked a poisoned cup of coffee on the floor, a foiled attempt at murder, the cup had shattered. Dexter’s mention of the fragments on the floor is flippantly dismissed by Thompson: “They have people to clear these things up.” Dexter, too, quickly notices the many poison bottles downstairs—the servants’ purview, note—while the oblivious inspector is perfunctory about interviewing anyone.
Later, someone seen only from the trousers down and wearing muddy galoshes to suggest the murderer came from outside stabs Sir William. But he is already dead, poisoned after the real murderer’s second attempt succeeded with a distinctly flavored glass of wine.
While Thompson continues to bungle, at film’s end the mystery is privately solved by Trentham’s maid Mary (Kelly Macdonald). As a maid, she overhears things from her mistress; as a servant, she has two especially lengthy conversations with a fellow servant.
The murder seems of little consequence to anyone and presumably goes unsolved beyond Gosford. Thompson drives away, and at the end of the weekend the guests depart and go their merry ways. The servants, as servants do, continue their cleaning and tidying up as if nothing had happened.
So much for what the film is not about, however intriguing it may seem.
Rather, before, during and after the demise of poor, disliked Sir William, Gosford Park provides a detailed insight into the lifestyles, pretensions, mores and, above all, the morals of both the British landed gentry upstairs and their humble servants downstairs. It is the twilight of both their existences, upstairs, perhaps, more aware of it than down.
Julian Fellowes, who wrote the screenplay, and won an Oscar for it, is himself part of an English aristocratic family, and is especially qualified to provide an authentic glimpse into this world. He is also responsible for the popular, six-season Downton Abbey from the BBC, originally intended as a spin-off of Gosford Park. Both enterprises share one major star, Maggie Smith.
The Fellowes dialogue works well with director Robert Altman’s always moving camera. Even when it appears static, the camera is still moving. The scenes alternate randomly between downstairs and upstairs, now the servants preparing a meal or setting a table, then those brilliantly attired aristocrats lounging about in superficial conversations or performing the best of empty etiquette at dinner. The roving camera picks up fragments of conversation, like an uninvited, eavesdropping guest.
Attention must be paid. The film needs to be seen at least twice, preferably three times, to fully appreciate what is happening. Vital information is most often said but once, never repeated. What might be taken as small talk or mere chatter frequently is a clue to how someone feels, what’s going on behind the scenes, who hates whom and what liaisons are underway. Everyone has an agenda. Of course, all the while the threads of plot weave among it all.
Fellowes’ DVD commentary is indispensable in understanding the sometimes absurd rules and perverse attitudes of these people at Gosford. The writer often transfers his own family experiences and observations to the screen.
The general helplessness of these aristocrats, as when a remembered uncle complained his toothbrush didn’t “froth,” never realizing the now absent valet always put tooth powder on it—this Fellowes paraphrases on screen. Countess Trentham can’t unscrew the lid of her Thermos, so en route to this shooting weekend that comprises the film, she has her chauffeur stop the car—it’s raining—and her maid must get out of the front compartment beside the driver and stand outside the car, easily opening the Thermos.
Typical of her class, when Trentham asks a servant to wash and iron a soiled blouse, she gives no thought as to what that entails, or how inconvenient, time-consuming it might be, and doesn’t care.
Lady Sylvia arranges a 1 a.m. tryst in her room with a handsome servant (Ryan Phillippe), but she still reminds him of her superior status: “You’ve got your hands in your pockets.” (As to the many affairs that were conducted, here as well as in the royal family, it was perfectly all right if they were kept quiet.)
Foremost among the major outdoor pastimes of the gentry were fishing, hunting and shooting. In the scene of shooters killing as many pheasants and quails as possible, their loaders were usually far better marksmen than their masters, but they wouldn’t dare let on. (In a single year, King Edward VII and his party at Sandringham House shoots killed some 30,000 birds.)
This landed aristocracy, while patronizing the theatre and the opéra, looked down on popular entertainment. A famous personality of the day, movie star and popular singer Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam), arrives for the weekend as a guest, though the upstairs still regard him as “not one of us.” While the servants, furtively around corners and on staircases, are enthralled by his singing of several Novello songs, the lords and ladies feign indifference and give only half-hearted applause.
When an American movie producer (Bob Balaban) relates he is in England to research his forthcoming film Charlie Chan in London, Smith puts him down, ending, “Oh, I’ll never see it anyway.” The servants were more aware of the modern world outside and more prepared for it when unemployment or dismissal came.
The vibrant threads that run through Gosford Park are the relationships between various people—upstairs or downstairs, doesn’t matter. There is that connection between the housekeeper (Helen Mirren) and the cook (Eileen Atkins), and, for that matter, between the housekeeper and the servant (Clive Owen) of some visiting guests. Left open-ended is a possible romance between him and Mary.
The revelation of the embarrassing liaison between Sir William and the maid Elise (Emily Watson) is exposed at dinner by her unprompted words—servants never spoke unless spoken to. Of the three aristocratic marriages highlighted, the husband (Anthony Meredith) of the one based on love—the other two are motivated by money and position—is encouraged by a lowly servant (Sophie Thompson), that even if he is a financial failure, love is more important.
And what is the secret the butler (Alan Bates) has kept—at least up until the end?
The opulence and extravagance of these country houses reached a peak in the early nineteenth century, when the English nobles owned a greater portion of the land; even today they own a third of Britain.
But the great depression in British agriculture at the end of that century, together with ever-increasing taxation on inherited wealth as well as big jumps in the death tax, ended farming as the primary source of wealth for most of the upper class. Many estates were demolished, sold or broken up. Today, few self-sufficient ones exist; most houses have been either opened to tourists or turned over to the guardianship of the National Trust.
While many common people went into “service” at these large estates, after World War I, which decimated scores of young men, many of the servants, of course, didn’t return, and those who survived the war found more productive employment in industry and manufacturing. All the new inventions, due mainly to the introduction of electricity—washing machines, refrigerators, ovens, tractors, etc.—reduced the need for so many servants.
When the worst happened and these estates became bankrupt around the turn of the twentieth century, the aristocratic men married rich, young American heiresses whose fortunes sustained their extravagant lifestyles.
Of the other films which depict this period, the best are Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993) and two credible versions of Brideshead Revisited (1981, 2008). Gosford Park is a worthy successor.
Not for the faint at heart—the film is 138 minutes, practically actionless and leisurely paced—but the rewards for individuals of a certain inclination, particularly toward patience, are immense. The two lone American actors (Phillippe and Balaban) work well amid the largely theater-trained British cast, and everyone easily adjusts to Fellowes’ intentionally bland, though often crucial dialogue and to Altman’s roaming, fluid camera.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjXdmXhwIQk[/embedyt]
I didn’t know Fellowes also wrote Downton Abbey. Which goes to show why I loved this movie so much. 🙂